Cognitive Biases flashcards
This deck defines the named biases and heuristics that appear across introductory psychology, AP Psychology and behavioral economics courses: confirmation bias, anchoring, the availability and representativeness heuristics, the base-rate and conjunction fallacies, hindsight bias, the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, loss aversion, framing, the sunk cost fallacy and the gambler's fallacy, among others. Every card gives a one-sentence definition followed by a short clarifying example.
These terms are almost always tested through scenarios rather than by definition: you are given a short vignette and asked which bias it illustrates. That makes the example clause matter as much as the definition, and it means the close pairs are where marks are lost — availability against representativeness, hindsight against overconfidence, the fundamental attribution error against self-serving bias. Learning each term attached to a concrete situation is what makes the vignettes readable at a glance.
The deck
How to study this deck
- Study the easily confused pairs side by side rather than alphabetically: availability versus representativeness, hindsight versus overconfidence, fundamental attribution error versus self-serving bias, and gambler's fallacy versus hot-hand fallacy. Those pairs are exactly where exam vignettes are set.
- Write your own one-line example for each bias from your own life before looking at the back of the card. A self-generated example is far more retrievable than a textbook one, and vignette questions are answered by matching a scenario to a remembered scenario.
- Practise in reverse: read only the example clause and name the bias. That is the direction multiple-choice questions actually test, and it exposes the definitions you can recite but cannot apply.